This invention relates to an apparatus for multi-cell support on a single modem board using a multi-core processor and a single partition symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) configuration. While the invention is particularly directed to the art of mobile telecommunications, and will be thus described with specific reference thereto, it will be appreciated that the invention may have usefulness in other fields and applications.
By way of background, LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a rapidly evolving 3GPP project that aims to improve the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) mobile phone standard to cope with future communication network demands. LTE improves wireless network efficiency/bandwidth, lower costs and enhance services experience. Specifically, LTE makes use of new spectrum opportunities and offer better integration with other open standards. LTE is composed of the LTE RAN (Radio Access Network) (also known as E-UTRAN) along with the EPS (Evolved Packet System, also called Evolved Packet Core).
Communication systems are generally split into two primary functions: data plane and control plane. In previous LTE products, at least two processors were used on the modem board: one to support the control plane functions (non-real time, e.g., Operations, Administration, and Management (or OA&M), and call processing management-related functionalities), and the other to terminate and support the data plane functions (real time, e.g., LTE Layer 2 processing). Both the control and data planes used different operating system (OS) instances, for example, Linux for the control plane and a hard real-time OS such as vXWorks (made and sold by Wind River Systems of Alameda, Calif.) for the data plane core. Typically, one modem board supports one sector or cell. So to support multi-cell (e.g., 3-cells or 6-cells) configurations, it is necessary to provide as many modem boards as the number of cells.
The present invention contemplates a new and improved apparatus that resolves the above-referenced difficulties and others.